Cancer touches every family in one way or another. As other diseases are brought under control, cancer is set to become the number one killer, and is already in epidemic proportions worldwide.
More than 10 million Americans are living with cancer, and they demonstrate the ever-increasing possibility of living beyond cancer.
In my small, coastal New England town, an hour outside New York, I know many people who have dealt with cancer. I can reel off the names of at least 15 women I know, all in their 40s.
At my age, I don't think anyone is untouched by cancer.
If you live long enough, sooner or later everybody you know has cancer.
There's a rising cancer trend and, as I said, one of the major contributors is the overall ageing of the population - we aren't dying of other things, so we're dying of cancer.
Despite the fact that one in every two men and one in every three women will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime, no one ever expects it to happen to them. I surely didn't. I was an otherwise healthy 37-year-old when I was diagnosed in 1996 with multiple myeloma, the same rare cancer Tom Brokaw has.
With over 3 million women battling breast cancer today, everywhere you turn there is a mother, daughter, sister, or friend who has been affected by breast cancer.
The cancer I don't have is everywhere now.
Although awareness of cancer's prevalence in the United States improves and medical advances in the field abound, pancreatic cancer has largely been absent from the list of major success stories.
People used to say everyone knows someone who's had breast cancer. In the past few weeks, I've learned something else: Everyone has someone close to them who has had breast cancer.
When I was diagnosed I didn't know how epidemic cancer was. You find out that everybody you know is touched by this disease.
I was told 50 percent of the population gets cancer. Everybody is going to be affected.
I'll also tell you that five hundred thousand people will die this year of cancer. And I'll also tell you that one in every four will be afflicted with this disease, and yet, somehow, we seem to have put it in a little bit of the background.
